Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 17, 2025

JenaTron - An Experimental Approach to Study the Effects of Plant History and Soil History on Grassland Ecosystem Functioning
Published on: March 21, 2025
Contrasting patterns of community-weighted mean traits and functional diversity in driving grassland productivity
Yuting Yang1, Zhifei Chen2, Bingcheng Xu1,3
1College of Grassland Agriculture, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, China.
Abstract:
Fertilization could influence ecosystem structure and functioning through species turnover (ST) and intraspecific trait variation (ITV), especially in nutrient limited ecosystems. To quantify the relative importance of ITV and ST in driving community functional structure and productivity changes under nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) addition in semiarid grasslands. In this regard, we conducted a four-year fertilizer addition experiment in a semiarid grassland on the Loess Plateau, China. We examined how fertilization affects species-level leaf and root trait plasticity to evaluate the ability of plants to manifest different levels of traits in response to different N and P addition. Also, we assessed how ITV or ST dominated community-weighted mean (CWM) traits and functional diversity variations and evaluated their effects on grassland productivity. The results showed that the patterns of plasticity varied greatly among different plant species, and leaf and root traits showed coordinated variations following fertilization. Increasing the level of N and P increased CWM_specific leaf area (CWM_SLA), CWM_leaf N concentration (CWM_LN) and CWM_maximum plant height (CWM_Hmax) and ITV predominate these CWM traits variations. As a results, increased CWM_Hmax, CWM_LN and CWM_SLA positively influenced grassland productivity. In contrast, functional divergence decreased with increasing N and P and showed negative relationships with grassland productivity. Our results emphasized that CWM traits and functional diversity contrastingly drive changes in grassland productivity under N and P addition.
More Related Videos
10:19A CO2 Concentration Gradient Facility for Testing CO2 Enrichment and Soil Effects on Grassland Ecosystem Function
Published on: November 21, 2015
10:31Isolation and Analysis of Microbial Communities in Soil, Rhizosphere, and Roots in Perennial Grass Experiments
Published on: July 24, 2018
Related Concept Videos
The Roles of Bacteria and Fungi in Plant Nutrition
Inorganic Nitrogen Assimilation
The Nitrogen Cycle
Primary Production
Overview of Nitrogen Metabolism
The largest pool of nitrogen available in the terrestrial ecosystem is gaseous nitrogen (N2) from the air, but this...
Key Elements for Plant Nutrition